The 12 actors behind terrifying movie villains

There’s something terrifying about a villain that’s no longer recognizable as a human. From Pennywise the Clown in “It” to Leatherface in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” series, the following characters are so scary looking it makes you forget there’s a real actor portraying them.

Behind the makeup, “The Exorcist’s” demon Pazuzu was really a young actress named Linda Blair.

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Linda Blair played the demon Pazuzu.

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According to the Washington Post, legendary special effects makeup artist Dick Smith took the lead on bringing Pazuzu to life – along with his then-assistant, Rick Baker.

To round out the terror and do practical effects for things that Blair simply couldn’t do – such as turn her head around a full 360 degrees – SFX man Marcel Vercoutere built a robotic stand-in for Blair, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Although you couldn’t recognize him, Robert Englund played Freddy Krueger in “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

“Charlie Tait and Dave Houghton were fresh out of animation college back then and they took on this shot. They used a cheap flatbed scanner to scan a cabbage leaf and a raw steak combo to make the interior eye sockets. One day my Mum came to the office to see what her ‘little girl’ was up to in this new crazy film industry and she saw us working on this shot. Charlie was adding blood pulsing out of the eyes – she ran out of the office screaming. I was actually pretty proud of the extra attention to detail. I heard that the director loved it!”

There’s a real person underneath the Pinhead makeup — and his name is Doug Bradley.

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Doug Bradley played Pinhead.

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Makeup artist Bob Keen and his team collaborated with writer and director Clive Barker to come up with what would become one of the most iconic horror film characters of all time.

Keen told Daily Dead about how Barker initially thought that nails – as in the kind you hit with a hammer – would do the trick.

“We were having real problems with having to contend with the aesthetics of a six-inch nail, though. It was very crude and it made the design look almost comical when the nails got too deep. I suggested that maybe they should be like thin pins, and because of this series of conversations, through trial and error we ended up with that design of Pinhead, which has become so iconic over time,” he said.

Ed Gale gave Chucky life in the films.

Though it’s Brad Dourif who voices the character of “Chucky,” it’s Ed Gale who brings the doll to life. Gale is the actor inside the Chucky costume in “Child’s Play,” “Child’s Play 2,” and “Bride of Chucky.”

“I am told Tom Holland requested me personally after hearing that I was Howard the Duck,” Gale told iHorror on landing the part. “He wanted someone physically capable of bringing the costume to life. I was known for doing just that.”

The demonic nun from “The Nun” and “The Conjuring 2” is played by actress Bonnie Aarons.

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Bonnie Aarons played the demonic nun in two films.

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Warner Bros./Kevin Winter/GettyImages

Perhaps you recognize Bonnie Aarons from her role as the Baroness Joy von Troken in “The Princess Diaries.”

Underneath it all, Venom is really Tom Hardy.

About the movie, INSIDER’s Kirsten Acuna said, “Through a clunky movie that feels like it stepped out of Tobey Maguire’s era of ‘Spider-Man’ movies, Hardy is actually the one thing that makes the movie truly worth watching.”

“Originally, Guillermo had wanted The Pale Man to have these lips that would go so wide that the skull underneath the skin would then pop out. Then, a skeleton was supposed to crawl out, and Guillermo then wanted him to go down on all fours and transforms into something else, similar to the transformation scene in ‘An American Werewolf in London.’ This was so he would be able to chase Ofelia, because otherwise, he was a blind character, so that meant he couldn’t traditionally find her.”